Clean Water Act Court Rulings
Determining Federal Authority Over Wetlands
In 2006, U.S. the Supreme Court decided Rapanos v. United States, the most recent and well-known of three Supreme Court decisions wrestling with the question of which wetlands are covered by the wetlands permitting program in the Clean Water Act (CWA). Since then, numerous decisions from the lower Federal courts have sought to divine what criteria to draw from the fractured opinions in Rapanos as to which wetlands are “jurisdictional” (within the CWA’s reach), and which are not. At the same time, the agencies charged with administering the wetlands permitting program, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Environmental Protection…
